Dangermouth

Hope this fella doesn't play too big a part: http://www.thisisanfield.com/2012/11/analysis-the-impact-of-lucas-return-on-joe-allen/ When he does, they will start to win more games and they do play good football, let's not forget that.

Brendan Rogers' latest press conference: Brendon Rogers today explained Liverpool's further fall from grace thus: "It's the ball," he said. When quizzed further by a pack of journalists whose collective eyebrows had risen further than one of Jordan's belts on a night out, the Northern Irishmen went on to expound his latest theory regarding why the Gods of Football had turned their backs on the epitome of football greatness that is/was (take your pick) Liverpool Football Club and why he hasn't yet been tarred with King Kenny's and Woy Hodgson's used brush. "It's like this, " he lilted in that oh-so-suave voice that carries such authority and knowingness in its rich, deep tones "the ball is too round. You see, what you have here is a ball," he said, holding up a rather normal looking football, it has to be said "that is exactly and precisely round. I emphasise the word 'round', because that's what it is, you see?" "Now this is what we have to play with and, to be fair, so do the opposition, but they're of a lesser calibre than us so they could play with a bean bag and still beat us, I mean, er...not be penalised by having to control a ball that just doesn't do what it's meant to," he continued, without gasping for air as he does like to talk a lot does BR. "What the finer, higher class of player that is a Liverpool Football Club player is used to is a ball that isn't round. Now I don't mean a ball that isn't round like a rugby ball, because of course that would be stupid, but a ball that is round but not perfectly round. There's a subtle difference, you see? It's not like you wouldn't notice if you weren't an expert, but if you were, you would. And the difference would be massive. About 15 goals a game and 3 penalties difference, to be precise? D' you see? And the reason for this is because the Liverpool Football Club's player's foot - that's the thing on the end of his leg, for the non technical among you - is also not round. You see? It's like they were designed by someone somewhere to go together like ...er...well, it's a natural fit." he concluded. Etc...got a bit bored of it, but yeah, agree he can go on a bit and always seems to criticise the ref/officials as though in every game they're all always against him. Compare him with, say Chris Powell from a few weeks ago who simply said Charlton were beaten by the better team and 'that was it'. Nice and simple. And short.

I believe they got rid of him when he was about 15/16, probably because he was 'too slow' and he is a L'pool fan. Do you think he could do well in their side under BR and how many would he score?

More publicity for the club. Good.

Well he's already 'forgotten' his time at SMS in terms of 'toughest job' and looking at what was required to keep us up, all he needed was to get 30% in wins rather than the 26% (rough figures, the info's on the BBC article this morning) he got and we'd have been ok. No doubt if QPR do go down then 2 months into the new season he'll be back off to Spurs/somewhere else as it's his 'spiritual home'.

Paul Scholes was never nippy but he knew what to do with the ball before he received it. Even now he can do it a bit. The ball moves quicker than anyone can run so it's not about that. Speed of thought, anticipation, reading of the game, speed of pass are important. It can help when you have someone fast like Torres was at L'pool and can hit a long, early ball for them to put someone one on one vs the keeper or get behind a defence, but physical speed per se isn't that important.

Atkinson from Bradford.

24 hours from MH's sacking and he's in, spouting the usual stuff. I wonder if he will find it the same as he did here or if he can work his usual magic by taking coaching sessions with his game plan written on the back of his hand. According to one of the local London papers the squad is very divided and this is the problem. If it is the case, arguably HR will do well although he'll have to reconcile himself with Taarbat who no doubt will have miraculously changed from the player he got rid of while at Spurs into one of the best players in the PL.

"Red Brick", "Red-brick", n'importe quoi. If anyone thinks I was 'having a go' at them, then they're wrong. I was simply pointing out that as far as I was aware, the RB (does that suffice?) uni preceded the poly and that for those who said that the people who were concerned with correcting poor English should go and teach, this (i.e. teaching) wasn't necessarily an indicator of competence. It was, of course, slightly tongue in cheek. Let's face it, many of the poorer English speakers/writers are now the English themselves but it is futile (and not a little annoying) to simply seek to correct people ad nauseum, particularly when there is not going to be a change in the behaviour of the individual. On a related but separate note (vis a vis the English language) compare Roberto di Matteo's use of English with say, Mancini, Zola and especially that bloke who managed England. He has a very good vocabulary range and speaks well, albeit occasionally haltingly (but probably because he is choosing his words). Wouldn't surprise me if he didn't deliberately choose a sh!t team to play at Juve because he felt the axe was about to fall anyway.

Yep. Red-brick were those unis established after the big, few established ones and existed before polytechnics. As for English teachers - they can't spell either, not if they're in Ipswich anyway: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/northgate-high-school-in-ipswich-hires-1448554 Maybe we should just close down all of them and send the kids out to roam the streets and annoy people (in Ipswich)?

How do you think he'll do? So far he seems to have done ok at Spurs in a similar situation but then we had to suffer him. Does anyone who is genuinely ITK have any views based on what they might have heard from his time here via their sources? I'm interested to learn if people think QPR will start to do well, or if they're a sinking ship because they are one of our direct competitors.

* In Pompey maths... .

A survey. Probably most of what you'd expect. http://www.leaguemanagers.com/media/The%20Annual%20Castrol%20LMA%20European%20Managers%20and%20Coaches%20Survey.pdf

Strikes me there are a lot of people who believe in the freedom of speech. As long as it's said and done in the way they want. Which means I agree with Turkish, in the main. I'm sure you all know the quote by Disraeli about this subject and some of you might have heard about someone called Antonio Gramsci, whose views held pertinence at a somewhat higher level. The right to Freedom of Speech is very wide indeed. This chant does to an extents remind me of a once popular chant: "The referee's a w@nker", which seems to have been replaced by "You don't know what you're doing", which is just a politer version of the same. Please excuse me if I don't reply again to this thread. 3 posts a day and really no desire to post on a forum, but I did (surprisingly) feel that Turkish needed to be backed up on this point because he does make sense, even if many here are antagonistic slightly towards him due to his oft-noted WUM leanings. As for Bearsy's comments that the original chant is/was well-known, um...not by me and while there is unlikely to be more to it than the article which mentions it and so his views are probably correct, I doubt in many other circumstances I would take such 'reference material' as being seminal.

Will they ever learn? BBC article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/20396465

Wasn't aware of it before but would have thought that it could as easily simply have meant 'cvvnt', which wouldn't have been a 'problem' had it been said and indeed was how I interpreted it. It could also have been 'f-g cvvnt', which is a bit harsh. He's probably just a tw*t as far as I can gather based on interviews he's given. Mind you, Rio usually comes across much better and he made a few stupid comments too. I don't think he qualifies as either, however. Someone who has started to be impressive is David James. Not stupid, as always, but a little less p.c. and just plainly intelligent and logical so hard to argue with. Would be interested to see how he gets on once he finally does hang up his boots and if he does decide to go into management. Kind of person I'd be quite happy to see at SFC in some role should events turn out that way (a long way ahead in the future).

Better skill than the free kick:

There you go: A defender who a lot of teams are interested in. If you take out the right number of letters from the article, you can spell "Saints are interested". HTH.

Actually, I thought it was scouts who did that, but then perhaps the name's just cover for something else. Glad to see you still don't understand the underlying point made, but let's face it: the only person who posts on here for your benefit is you. Many of the rest of us just stick to matters intelligent so please feel free to just set up your own thread where you can argue with yourself to your heart's content.

Apparently Hodgson didn't just pick him but had him scouted while he was at WBA. Just like Lallana and at least one other. None of whom WBA ever went in for. Think Roy's a bit of a fantasist?

http://www.football365.com/news/21554/8244341/No-Stats-Indicate-Better-Football-

Glad others have noticed this.

Well, cba to read a lot of the carp above but did read the piece. Not particularly 'scientific' or 'expert' but did appear to show that if a club is, say, good enough to get 1.3 points a game in the long term, it will overall get 1.3 points when you average it out. I seem to recollect they stated 18 months as being the long-term measurement. They did, to a large degree say that the manager wasn't as important as some would have and that other factors e.g. calibre of playing staff had a large effect (and probably a bigger one than the manager - my extrapolation). And the calibre of the manager would have an effect too, so those saying we should have stayed with people who couldn't manage like Wigley are missing the point as are those who say that replacing a good manager with a bad one plainly doesn't mean you're going to win the league. Unless your name's 'Mancini' of course. But then he replaced Hughes.

Happy man. Laudrup interview.

Same old NA stuff; but for once I was actually pleased to hear all that guff! He managed to mention each player individually too. Anyone got NA's email addy? I think we need to tell him that Lallana's diving and ponderous nature at times is becoming a PITA.